Normal wall-hung whiteboards are the usual solution, but they are usually very expensive per square foot. Leverage Research found some used ones (with minor scuffs) for about $3/sqft at a nearby used office supplies liquidator, but if bought new they’re more like $5.50/sqft. Note: paint thinner removes old ghosting from used boards.
“Whiteboard paint” like IdeaPaint lets you turn a whole wall into a whiteboard for about $4.50/sqft, but lots of reviews say it doesn’t erase that well, and has other problems. Also, an organization I’m close to tried this and confirmed that IdeaPaint was terrible.
The best-quality (not most popular) “peel and stick” whiteboard appears to be Wall Pops. This has worked surprisingly well during its first week, but I don’t know whether it will cling to the wall forever, and one thing to note is that it’s so thin that it pics up the texture of the wall you stick it to. You can peel it off the wall and move it to a new location quite easily; it sticks by static. One particular black dry-erase marker didn’t dry-erase from this surface hardly at all, for some reason.
Shower board (aka “panel board”) from Home Depot (or similar) is the classic solution for cheap whiteboard. Almost every “DIY cheap whiteboard!” blog post out there is about using shower board. But in our test, there was significant ghosting & smearing when erasing stuff more than 4 days old, or when erasing stuff written in the past 60 seconds.
MagnaTag and MyWhiteBoards have solutions for whole-wall whiteboard panels, but they’re not particularly cheap.
Our office has lots of large windows, and dry erase markers work just fine on glass, but you really need a white background so that what you have enough contrast to read what you’ve written. We’re looking at drop-down white backgrounds (like you use with a projector) that we might mount in our large wall-windows, but we haven’t tested that yet. We also haven’t yet tested the liquid chalk markers that are supposedly more readable on glass than normal dry-erase markers.
Clear ones like at Clear Future are classy, but they’re not particularly cheap, and you have to solve the same contrast problem as with the windows in (6).
At the July research workshop we resorted to using large Post-It papers rather than whiteboard; this worked okay in a pinch but gets clumsy pretty quickly.
I once made a white board out of one of those transparent office chair mats. I just stapled it to my white wall. I never ended up using it extensively, but it worked pretty well. If you want them professional-looking at more cost and slightly more work, consider just painting the back of a piece of plexi glass white, or just the wall behind it. That’s how this institution solved the same problem
(Edit: I researched some more and, due to ghosting issues, acrylic glass (or plexiglass) is not an ideal whiteboard material.)
You could make 10 giant white boards for ~1000dollars, according to this website. A cheaper, if less stylish option, buy these 4′x4′ panels for ~50 each.
If you want to go even more DIY, here’s a list of whiteboard materials:
Melamine
Painted steel
Ceramic (glass) fired onto a steel surface in a kiln. The only material which does not ghost if the ink is left on for long periods of time.
Melamine seems like the best bet. Look for melamine-laminated plywood, as it will likely be as high-quality as most store-bought boards. Here’s the type of thing you’d want, and it’s very cheap. But you’d have to find someone willing to sell it in small quantities.
Note, chalk is an option—and a cheap one. This chalkboard contact paper is very cheap and has excellent reviews:http://goo.gl/samVWk What’s that you say? You’re too cool for chalkboards? I assure you, you’re not. If you do decide to buy the chalk paper, remember it must be applied to a smooth surface—one reviewer recommends masonite board. You cannot stick it directly to a wall, unless the wall is abnormally smooth. Same goes for spray-on chalkboard coating—which works very well, too.
I’ve much wondered why whiteboards became popular. Admittedly chalk can rub off on your clothes, but it doesn’t stain anything, and an arbitrary piece of chalk is guaranteed to work with an arbitrary blackboard—the same can’t be said of whatever dry-erase marker you find lying around.
The messiness and potential for really unpleasant sounds, in my mind, far outweighs the need for a specific type of dry-erase marker. Though that might be related to how easily sounds can be unpleasant to me in particular.
I meant that it’s obvious that a given piece of chalk will work, whereas a given dry-erase marker may have dried up without obviously looking like it’s dried up.
I am definitely worried about the reflection issues with clear plexi glass, especially since we often take photos of our whiteboards. Maybe the white plexi glass you linked to would work, though. I might try that.
This guy has tested the ghosting properties of a bunch of different types of plastic, and he made himself a pretty good ghosting-free whiteboard that photographs well out of Polypropylene. He says marks can stay on for weeks and still erase completely.
I’ve done a bit more googling and I found this link. So it looks like melamine-coated plywood is available at hardware stores. It’s considerably more expensive than the first link, but still cheap. And at least the minimum order isn’t 100 cubic meters! What you might want to do is bring your dry-erase markers to a warehouse hardware store and test them on the melamine and whatever other materials look promising.
Also I forgot to include this in my last post: I used liquid chalk on glass back when I worked at a restaurant. Smiggle is the best brand, and very erasable. Some of the others are hard to erase without window cleaning fluid. I’m not sure if they sell it in the US though.
My research OCD has started to kick in again and I’ve been doing more searches on whiteboards. It seems this ghosting issue is the big problem, and some—though not all - have found it to be a problem on melamine boards. Polypropylene seems like the best bet for a full wall solution. Though for long term heavy use, the ceramic boards are starting to make sense; they last indefinably and have zero ghosting.
Now that I have received my degree in Whiteboard Science from the University of Google, my recommendation for MIRI is this: purchase one or two ceramic whiteboards for heavy daily use and then buy polypropylene (in terms of ghosting, it is almost as good as ceramic) for the remaining walls.
If you have dry-erase surfaces, I recommend the policy of having only dry-erase markers around—i.e. no permanent markers. That way you make finding a marker to write much easier (you can just grab the nearest marker), and you also drastically reduce the problem of accidental permanent marker on the dry-erase surfaces.
Unfortunately they also suffer from the problems with not erasing things after a while, although you can still clean them with water after that and it works. Also, they’re very thin and tear easily.
EDIT: Also, this thread is making me think that perhaps searching for “clear plastic” on Amazon and buying one of the things that come up to put it on a white surface could also work. Like this. People replace glass with this material to make greenhouses; maybe it would be a good glass replacement for whiteboards, too...
There are desks behind the inner windows, though, which get what sunlight they get by way of the inner windows. But I would expect the problem to be tolerable if the backgrounds get pulled back up after use...
You can build a sexy glass whiteboard from IKEA tabletops. We used these $25.99 table tops at the last startup I was at, mounted on the wall with standard tools:
Replying to this late, but: strongly consider spending the cash on lots of real whiteboards. I have never found an alternative that is anything close to as good.
At my company we use ‘expo neon’ dry erase markers on windows and mirrors, and they show up extremely clearly, unlike normal dry erase. Something we have also done is used glass-top conference tables as a writing surface during design meetings, which works very well.
PROJECT: Inexpensive dry-erase surfaces.
Experiments:
Normal wall-hung whiteboards are the usual solution, but they are usually very expensive per square foot. Leverage Research found some used ones (with minor scuffs) for about $3/sqft at a nearby used office supplies liquidator, but if bought new they’re more like $5.50/sqft. Note: paint thinner removes old ghosting from used boards.
“Whiteboard paint” like IdeaPaint lets you turn a whole wall into a whiteboard for about $4.50/sqft, but lots of reviews say it doesn’t erase that well, and has other problems. Also, an organization I’m close to tried this and confirmed that IdeaPaint was terrible.
The best-quality (not most popular) “peel and stick” whiteboard appears to be Wall Pops. This has worked surprisingly well during its first week, but I don’t know whether it will cling to the wall forever, and one thing to note is that it’s so thin that it pics up the texture of the wall you stick it to. You can peel it off the wall and move it to a new location quite easily; it sticks by static. One particular black dry-erase marker didn’t dry-erase from this surface hardly at all, for some reason.
Shower board (aka “panel board”) from Home Depot (or similar) is the classic solution for cheap whiteboard. Almost every “DIY cheap whiteboard!” blog post out there is about using shower board. But in our test, there was significant ghosting & smearing when erasing stuff more than 4 days old, or when erasing stuff written in the past 60 seconds.
MagnaTag and MyWhiteBoards have solutions for whole-wall whiteboard panels, but they’re not particularly cheap.
Our office has lots of large windows, and dry erase markers work just fine on glass, but you really need a white background so that what you have enough contrast to read what you’ve written. We’re looking at drop-down white backgrounds (like you use with a projector) that we might mount in our large wall-windows, but we haven’t tested that yet. We also haven’t yet tested the liquid chalk markers that are supposedly more readable on glass than normal dry-erase markers.
Clear ones like at Clear Future are classy, but they’re not particularly cheap, and you have to solve the same contrast problem as with the windows in (6).
At the July research workshop we resorted to using large Post-It papers rather than whiteboard; this worked okay in a pinch but gets clumsy pretty quickly.
I once made a white board out of one of those transparent office chair mats. I just stapled it to my white wall. I never ended up using it extensively, but it worked pretty well. If you want them professional-looking at more cost and slightly more work, consider just painting the back of a piece of plexi glass white, or just the wall behind it. That’s how this institution solved the same problem
(Edit: I researched some more and, due to ghosting issues, acrylic glass (or plexiglass) is not an ideal whiteboard material.) You could make 10 giant white boards for ~1000dollars, according to this website. A cheaper, if less stylish option, buy these 4′x4′ panels for ~50 each.
If you want to go even more DIY, here’s a list of whiteboard materials:
Melamine
Painted steel
Ceramic (glass) fired onto a steel surface in a kiln. The only material which does not ghost if the ink is left on for long periods of time.
PET, Polyethylene terephthalate-on-steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteboard#Surface_materials.
Melamine seems like the best bet. Look for melamine-laminated plywood, as it will likely be as high-quality as most store-bought boards. Here’s the type of thing you’d want, and it’s very cheap. But you’d have to find someone willing to sell it in small quantities.
Note, chalk is an option—and a cheap one. This chalkboard contact paper is very cheap and has excellent reviews:http://goo.gl/samVWk What’s that you say? You’re too cool for chalkboards? I assure you, you’re not. If you do decide to buy the chalk paper, remember it must be applied to a smooth surface—one reviewer recommends masonite board. You cannot stick it directly to a wall, unless the wall is abnormally smooth. Same goes for spray-on chalkboard coating—which works very well, too.
I’ve much wondered why whiteboards became popular. Admittedly chalk can rub off on your clothes, but it doesn’t stain anything, and an arbitrary piece of chalk is guaranteed to work with an arbitrary blackboard—the same can’t be said of whatever dry-erase marker you find lying around.
Personally, I just find chalk super unpleasant to use. It leaves weird dust on your hands and makes them feel all dry and weird. shudder
I don’t know why anyone else likes whiteboards though.
I agree, and I also find using a whiteboard really pleasant, especially with a fresh marker.
The messiness and potential for really unpleasant sounds, in my mind, far outweighs the need for a specific type of dry-erase marker. Though that might be related to how easily sounds can be unpleasant to me in particular.
I meant that it’s obvious that a given piece of chalk will work, whereas a given dry-erase marker may have dried up without obviously looking like it’s dried up.
Well, I did say it far outweighed it. Even that’s less of an inconvenience in my mind, but that’s getting to be very much a personal preference thing.
Thanks!
I am definitely worried about the reflection issues with clear plexi glass, especially since we often take photos of our whiteboards. Maybe the white plexi glass you linked to would work, though. I might try that.
The melamine-coated plywood sounds promising! I’ll look into that.
Chalk is messy, and our people tend to eat snacks while doing math.
This guy has tested the ghosting properties of a bunch of different types of plastic, and he made himself a pretty good ghosting-free whiteboard that photographs well out of Polypropylene. He says marks can stay on for weeks and still erase completely.
I’ve done a bit more googling and I found this link. So it looks like melamine-coated plywood is available at hardware stores. It’s considerably more expensive than the first link, but still cheap. And at least the minimum order isn’t 100 cubic meters! What you might want to do is bring your dry-erase markers to a warehouse hardware store and test them on the melamine and whatever other materials look promising.
Also I forgot to include this in my last post: I used liquid chalk on glass back when I worked at a restaurant. Smiggle is the best brand, and very erasable. Some of the others are hard to erase without window cleaning fluid. I’m not sure if they sell it in the US though.
97x49 for $35 is pretty damn awesome.
My research OCD has started to kick in again and I’ve been doing more searches on whiteboards. It seems this ghosting issue is the big problem, and some—though not all - have found it to be a problem on melamine boards. Polypropylene seems like the best bet for a full wall solution. Though for long term heavy use, the ceramic boards are starting to make sense; they last indefinably and have zero ghosting.
Now that I have received my degree in Whiteboard Science from the University of Google, my recommendation for MIRI is this: purchase one or two ceramic whiteboards for heavy daily use and then buy polypropylene (in terms of ghosting, it is almost as good as ceramic) for the remaining walls.
If you have dry-erase surfaces, I recommend the policy of having only dry-erase markers around—i.e. no permanent markers. That way you make finding a marker to write much easier (you can just grab the nearest marker), and you also drastically reduce the problem of accidental permanent marker on the dry-erase surfaces.
I purchased some of these, which you get at about $0.16/sqft:
http://www.amazon.com/National-Brand-Write-On-Static/dp/B0000E2RGH/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1374840990&sr=8-8&keywords=white+board+paper
Unfortunately they also suffer from the problems with not erasing things after a while, although you can still clean them with water after that and it works. Also, they’re very thin and tear easily.
EDIT: Also, this thread is making me think that perhaps searching for “clear plastic” on Amazon and buying one of the things that come up to put it on a white surface could also work. Like this. People replace glass with this material to make greenhouses; maybe it would be a good glass replacement for whiteboards, too...
For 6: if sunlight positively affects workplace productivity, drop down white backgrounds on windows would have adverse consequences.
Balancing suggestion: install a window on a wall.
That solution only works for inner windows, anyway, since we can’t pull down things on the outside of our building on the third floor.
There are desks behind the inner windows, though, which get what sunlight they get by way of the inner windows. But I would expect the problem to be tolerable if the backgrounds get pulled back up after use...
Oh, I completely forgot inner windows exist! Sorry about that.
You can build a sexy glass whiteboard from IKEA tabletops. We used these $25.99 table tops at the last startup I was at, mounted on the wall with standard tools:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60221471/
I was reading my old posts and I saw these old comments to you. This got me curious: what was your eventual solution?
Replying to this late, but: strongly consider spending the cash on lots of real whiteboards. I have never found an alternative that is anything close to as good.
Another useful link: This guy did a comprehensive review of whiteboard materials which you might find helpful.
At my company we use ‘expo neon’ dry erase markers on windows and mirrors, and they show up extremely clearly, unlike normal dry erase. Something we have also done is used glass-top conference tables as a writing surface during design meetings, which works very well.